Catalina Caper

There are only three things that I can say complimentary about Catalina Caper, one was that it offered some nice scenery of Catalina beach and the beach city of Avalon, Little Richard sang a number and Tommy Kirk got a needed paycheck. After his exile from Disney Studios and mainstream Hollywood, he probably needed the work and as we know he was taking work from wherever.

I'm sure it was the tourist board of Catalina Island that commissioned Catalina Caper, just make lots of nice cinematography of our island and then put some kind of story on it. Kirk plays a kid from Arizona where they don't have beaches, he's a self described 'desert rat' and he's there with buddy Peter Duryea to learn the beach scene.

Little does he know that he gets himself innocently involved in the stealing of an ancient Chinese scroll from the Ming dynasty by the parents of one of the beach kids. Despite his parentage the kid is honest and the beach gang unite to return the scroll and save the parents from jail. It's all frighteningly dumb.

A few laughs from Robert Donner who rivals some of the great slapstick comedians of the day in number of pratfalls he takes as an inept insurance investigator. The songs which are just grafted into the film are all right. Kirk and Ulla Stromstedt are clearly too old for the parts they play.

Catalina is a beautiful place from which dumb stories are located.

I could not imagine watching this without Joel and the bots.

Tommy Kirk acts like he'd prefer to be anywhere else. A cameo by Little Richard does nothing for his career. The music is awful, the dialogue terrible, and the plot (something about a stolen painting and a lot of young girls in bikinis) was incoherent. A real stinker.

This movie has very little going for it besides the performance of Tommy Kirk, the funny hat that chubby comedy-relief guy wears, and the cinematography of Ted V. Mikels. But it does has an ace up its sleeve - Robert Donner!

Yes, Robert Donner, that renowned character actor justly beloved for his roles as Yancey Tucker on "The Waltons" and Exidor on "Mork and Mindy". However, the movie's makers, apparently afraid that Mr. Donner, with his overwhelmingly dignified presence, would steal the show from the "stars", forced him to make a series of embarrassing and incredibly forced pratfalls. Oh, the ignominy of it all!

Even by 60's beach party movie standards, this is really cheesy. Actually, awful is a more accurate term. I guess this was intended to be a fun beach party movie but somewhere along the line, it turned out to be a physically and psychologically draining experience. Bad acting all around. Lots of awful music, including a little number in which Little Richard humiliates himself. And a lot of *ahem* comedy that falls flat on its face (quite literally in the case of the obnoxious pratfall guy who serves as the would-be comic relief). And to top it all off, thrown into this mess, making the movie even more convulted than it already was, is a subplot involving an ancient scroll stolen by a bunch of bungling jewel thieves.

This movie was turned into a classic episode of the dearly departed MST3K, so I can't really say this movie turned out to be a complete waste of film. But if you dare watch this soul-sucking movie without the company of Joel Hodgson and his robot pals, you might end up with the urge to jump out the nearest window to put yourself out of your misery.

You'd have to be out of your mind or detached from all common sense to find some redeeming value in this clunker. The plot seems to concern guys, girls, sand, a scroll and Mork & Mindy's Exidor doing pratfalls. Oh, and there are musical numbers, many musical numbers. These elements are strung together very loosely to form some sort of plot, but what's there on screen will make you scratch your head. Little Richard pops up and sings a catchy little dittie and shows everyone else involved what talent is. Best part of the film is when all the girls slap all of the guys and storm off. The next scene is a musical number and then everything is forgotten! Oh to be young and foolish and working on a beach picture. Mary Wells sings the title song "Never Steal Anything Wet."